Pages

20 July 2014

In 2014 we said goodbye to the late John Banks, the founding president of the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society. He was a man described by his former workmates as one of the true ‘Boggo Road Greats’, not only because he was one of those screws who was respected by officers and prisoners, but he was also a champion of the Boggo Road historical site. John could come across as very much old school 'hard-but-fair’ and easily annoyed into gruffness by fuss and nonsense, but his true nature was that of a giver and humanitarian. I’d like to take the time to put something of his life, as I knew it, on the record.

John at work, 1980s (BRGHS).

John was born in Brisbane on 3 October 1939 - a birthday he shared with the No.2 Division of Boggo Road. His schooling took him all around south Queensland until he gained a scholarship in 1954. His working career in Australia and overseas included long-distance truck and coach driving (and working as a doorman alongside the infamous John Andrew Stuart) before he became a prison officer at Boggo Road in 1972. By that time he had a wife (Gwen) and two children (Michelle and Michael).

John also worked at other prisons such as Wacol before his retirement in the 1990s, and then he started guided tours at Boggo Road with three other men. Within a few years the others had retired to leave John and a tiny handful of volunteers running the not-for-profit museum, and that’s where I met him in 2001.

As manager of the Boggo Road museum he very regularly volunteered his way through 60-hour weeks without making a cent in return. As a tour guide he took thousands of schoolchildren through the place, sometimes doing six tours a day, and the schools came back year after year, just for John. Teachers have recently been in touch with us expressing their disappointment that he wasn't there to take tours anymore. At times John carried the gaol on his back to keep it open and - by virtue of it being open and in regular use - safe from demolition.

An image that always stuck in my mind was when I called into the museum about 6am one September morning to get some work out of the way (I had my own keys). As I walked up the driveway through cold dawn drizzle, there was John slowly making his way around the prison, unlocking the dozens of doors as he did every morning, a cat following close behind. He’d usually be there for another 12 hours, 18 if there was a function that night. And this was how he lived his life at the museum.

John, 2005 (BRGHS).

The simple fact is that nobody has ever worked as hard for Boggo Road and nobody ever will again. The fact that Boggo Road is still standing is part of his legacy.

I would talk here about his ‘tireless efforts’ at the museum, but that would not be right because he was greatly tired by his efforts. It was not uncommon for him to take five or six tours through the prison in one day, in later years limping through them and taking short breaks when he could to rest his arthritic knees. He was a man in genuine pain (which was thankfully relieved in later years by knee operations). And this was his life, week in, week out, and he did it for free – the true mark of a labour of love. This was all despite John being one of the ‘faction’ who remembered the fly-by-night heritage demolitions of previous years and insisted the government was going to end up bulldozing Boggo Road anyway.

His effort was all the more remarkable because he also had to endure what was described as a ‘personal vendetta’. The museum was not-for-profit, with the surplus for each year being donated to charities such as ‘Drug Arm’, and every cent was meticulously accounted for in the records. Despite this, a businessman who leased an office at Boggo Road and had free access for tours developed some kind of a personal issue with John and lodged an endless series of petty and often hysterical complaints behind his back. John generally brushed these off, but it offended the rest of the volunteers, especially when John got a call from Centrelink because someone had told them he was making money at the museum (and therefore basically committing pension fraud). A completely false accusation, as was soon discerned.

To see a fundamentally honest pensioner freely volunteer his time to take so many tours through the prison and then be treated like this was beyond belief. What is the mentality of a person who would do that? It was, as another former officer said in prison parlance, 'a maggot act’. In Christmas 2008, after John had moved to the Sunshine Coast hinterland for a well-deserved retirement, the Boggo businessman sent him absurd legal threats and made exorbitant demands for compensation. It is a measure of the man that John was able to shrug off these attacks over the years, but he was a honest and compassionate person who gave his time freely for the common good and he deserved better.

Of course, sheer hard work alone doesn’t make you a good person. What made John stand out was the fact that he was, much like his good friend and museum colleague Don Walters, a humanitarian - despite the often gruff exterior. For example, he was once asked in a radio interview about prison officer brutality and he replied that, ‘some officers seemed to think prisoners were there for punishment. They weren’t. They were there as punishment’. This was a theme he brought to his prison tours. ‘Every prisoner who walked in the door’, he would say, ‘will one day walk out of it. And they could move next door to you. What kind of a person do you want them to be after prison? Do you want them to be better people or be brutalised?’ He had no time for former officers badmouthing prisoners on tours and if it happened he let them know it.

John was saddened by the prospects of some of the young inmates in his keep. Many had the kind of childhoods and lack of education that make prison almost inevitable, and without further help they were condemned to spend a life in and out of prison. John was the kind of officer who tried to provide that help. He took the time outside his regular duties to teach inmates to read. He taught them horticulture, using rose cuttings obtained from New Farm park keepers. He also taught the craft of leatherwork, and used the proceeds from sales of their work on Christmas presents for the particularly disadvantaged inmates with intellectual problems who probably deserved to be in a different kind of institution. Christmas Day for John and Gwen was sometimes spent inside institutions handing out these presents.

As I said, all this was done outside his regular workload. He didn’t need to do it, but he did it because he wanted to. Most of the prisoners and the officers respected him for it.

Unlike some prison officers, John made no effort to conceal his address and phone number, despite having young children at home. His philosophy was that if he did his job properly and fairly inside the prison, he would have nothing to fear outside of it. Sometimes former inmates would rock up to the museum just to say hello to ‘Mr Banks’. It is no surprise that one of his favourite movies was ‘The Green Mile’, and Tom Hanks’ characterisation of a sympathetic prison officer in that movie probably struck a chord with John. As he told me during an interview last year;

'Being a prison officer, you are not supposed to talk to prisoners, you are not to have any dealings with prisoners, but how can you work within a system and not having something to say to somebody? Now, I had no trouble with any prisoner, they were quite amiable to me, they were polite, and the feeling between me... they were prisoners, I was a prison officer, when I went home I had to forget about what they went in there for, but when I came back to work I had to remember what they were in there for and I had to make certain they didn’t escape. But if you want to be gruffy and bad-tempered and do all the stupid things... you’d have a pretty rough time in there because all you do is just keep looking at your back all the time.'

He was also a giver outside of prison, whether he was coaching baseball to kids or being the RSPCA ‘Santa Paws’ for several years (you haven’t really seen John until you’ve seen him dressed as Father Christmas greeting a long line of pets - "have you been a good budgie this year?"). No doubt there’s a lot of other generous things he did that I don’t know about, because you had to rely on other people to tell you about this stuff. For instance, one thing I only heard about from Gwen was when John took a small group of at-risk youth through Boggo Road for a tour once. The biggest boy in the group had a bit of an attitude and seemed proud that he would probably be going to prison one day. John took the time to explain to the boy that while he might be a big fish in his little youth group, he would be passed around the big fellas in prison like a sex toy. And people like John wouldn’t always be there to protect him. John knew because he had seen this happen.

Well, about six months later the youth group coordinator rang up to say ‘thank you’. That little talk had made such an impact that the boy’s attitude had completely changed and he had since started an apprenticeship. Prison was no longer an option. As I said to Gwen when she later told me this, if John had done nothing else with his life, that one thing alone would make it a life worth living.

He also had a great touch with animals (outside of pig shooting and fishing), and a wild cat that lived around Boggo Road adopted him, following him everywhere and jumping on his lap whenever the chance arose. When the museum closed in 2005, John adopted PC (Prison Cat) and PC continues to live a happy life today. John also became a bit of a Birdman of Boggo Road and loved breeding canaries and budgies. The Banks household was often a foster refuge for wounded wildlife.

John and Gwen receive honorary lifetime memberships of the BRGHS from Senator Claire Moore after hisretirement in 2007 (BRGHS).

So what is John’s legacy? In terms of History, it is not only the survival of Boggo Road prison and the tens of thousands of children who learned about it from him, it is also the fact that the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society exists and that hundreds of its members continue his work. John always said that seeing the museum come to life when it could just as easily have been demolished was a ‘dream come true’, and he took great satisfaction in knowing that the good work was being carried on by others, and that the prospects of Boggo Road becoming a not-for-profit site again were looking very promising. How many of us can aspire to having others remember and carry on our labour of love when we have passed away?

The BRGHS will, in time, formalise his legacy at Boggo Road.

Even more important than all that, however, is the legacy of his personal life, in having a family that love him, and people grateful for the innumerable acts of kindness that made their lives easier or better.

After a short illness, John died peacefully in his sleep in June with loving family by his side. In typical John fashion, he asked for a no-fuss private family funeral (although his first preference was to be put in a cardboard box and dumped in the garden).

His family has lost a deeply-loved husband, father and grandfather; his colleagues have lost a respected friend; and Boggo Road has lost its champion. However, the dead only die when they are forgotten, and the work and actions of John Banks counted for a lot and will clearly not be forgotten.

The following poem is often attributed (probably wrongly) to Ralph Waldo Emerson. There is a lot in it that can be said of John Banks and remind us that even after all the slings and arrows, he did succeed…

‘Success’
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

11 July 2014

'A ‘BOOB’ IN A BAOB TREE.
Away up in Western Australia's wild and woolly nor-west some distance out of Wyndham there's a boob in a baob tree which is surely the queerest gaol in the world! It was used in the early days for imprisoning natives overnight while on their way to the township for trial and it is known officially as the Hillgrove Lockup.' (Sydney Morning Herald, 31 August 1940)

(The World's News, 27 December 1902)

‘A Boob in a Baob Tree’, indeed. Well played, headline writer. ‘Boob’ is slang for ‘prison’ and, yes, he was writing about keeping prisoners inside a tree, specifically the rather peculiar boabs (Adansonia gregorii, also known as baobabs among many other names) found in the Kimberley region of north-western Australia.

There are two such ‘prison trees’ in the Kimberley region, one near Wyndham and another near Derby, some 900km away. Plenty has been written about these trees over the last century, thousands of intrepid tourists have photographed them (they have been tourism drawcards for decades), and the trees are even listed in the State Heritage Register of Western Australia. As boabs are some of the longest-living lifeforms in Australia (some are estimated to be 1,500 years old) their future as historical icons seems assured.

However… as a historian and a skeptic (every historian should be one) I would say that extraordinary claims demand hard evidence. There are plenty of retrospective tales about these trees being used as lockups, but is there any hard evidence? I tried to find some…

The Kimberley. Wyndham is the yellow dot to the east, Derby the yellow dot to the west.

The Story
On the King River and Kurunjie Gibb River roads just south of the small town of Wyndham stands a large hollow boab tree at least 15 meters in circumference. This is the ‘Boab Prison Tree’, widely thought to have once been used as a makeshift lockup around the turn of the 20th century. Back then it was reportedly known as the ‘Hillgrove Lockup’. It was often necessary to march prisoners in chains over hundreds of kilometres from their places of arrest, and safe overnight camping places were required where the prisoners could be secured (according to a 1905 government report, about 90% of Aboriginal arrests in the region were for cattle-killing).

A similar tree just south of Derby is also said to have been used to confine Aboriginal prisoners being transported to Derby in the 1890s. The hollow had a ‘ceiling’ about 6 metres high with two natural holes for ventilation.

'Prison Boab Tree', Derby.

Newspaper articles about these trees began to appear in the 1910s and were already referring to their use as lockups in the past tense. The earliest mention I’ve found of it so far is in a Perth newspaper of 1919, which simply featured a photo with the caption, 'A Boab Tree at the King River Pool, Kimberley. It is known as tile "Hill Grove Lockup." Twenty six native prisoners have been held in this tree at one time.'

Occasional newspaper articles over the following decades repeated the claim and generally provided very similarly-worded information. The story goes that patrolling policemen in the 1890s or 1900s discovered that the Wyndham tree was hollow and they cut a person-sized opening so they could use it as a lockup for Aboriginal prisoners they were transferring to Wyndham. This was no mean feat as the walls of the tree are about 60cm thick. The entrance was said to have been fitted with an iron grille.

The internal capacity was around 9 square metres, reasonably roomy for inside a tree but probably not enough to accommodate 26 men, as claimed in this 1923 article, or 30 prisoners as suggested in this 1931 Queenslander article. This claim of 30 was also made by Ernestine Hill in her 1940 book The Great Australian Loneliness. A 1940 article makes the more realistic claim that some prisoners were chained to the outside of the tree when the hollow was full:

‘Some years ago a trooper was bringing into Wyndham a party in chains when at dusk they arrived at the baob-tree. As there wasn't room inside for everybody the trooper chained two of the prisoners to the tree. One of the pair was a magnificent specimen of a man well over six feet high with well shaped arms and legs and a blacksmith's chest. At daybreak that native was missing and so was the chain. But an iron bolt to which the chain had been padlocked was left bent back in the form of a hairpin.’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 31 August 1940)

It was also claimed in the Mirror (Perth) in 1936 that ‘the Queerest Gaol in All Australia’ had a huge bolt fastened into it for chaining prisoners to.

The boab has soft bark which allows people to carve graffiti into the tree, and a photo taken circa 1917-23 shows the words ‘Hillgrove Police Station’ cut deeply into the Wyndham tree (it can be seen here). Of course a bit of graffiti does not prove anything – I could carve the same words into any old tree – but it does show the lockup story had currency at the time. Hundreds of other names and initials have been cut into the tree since then and the Hillgrove graffiti has all but disappeared.

(Argus, 4 February 1950)

Not as much was written in the newspapers about the Derby boab, and a 1966 article on boabs in that esteemed academic journal Woman’s Weekly even suggested that the Derby tree was probably never used as a lockup, although they did add the rider ‘unlike the other well-known hollow baobab at Wyndham’.

Despite this, the two trees were heritage-listed in the 1990s. It is claimed in the State Heritage Register entry (under ‘Prison Boab Tree’) that the Wyndham tree was used as a lockup, and there is also emphasis on the Indigenous significance of the tree, although all uses are part of ‘a long oral tradition history of use’.

The entry in the same register for the ‘Prison Boab Tree’ of Derby makes the more ambiguous claim that the tree was ‘believed’ to have been used as a lockup. Despite this, it is noted that the tree is significant as ‘a symbol for the town of Derby as for the history associated with it. It represents the harsh treatment prisoners often received in the north of Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’. It is also noted that the tree is a ‘well established tourist landmark’, but then boabs in general have attracted sightseers since the 19th century. Indeed, the popularity of the prison trees and the resulting stream of people climbing into them and carving names in the bark has resulted in the trees being fenced off.

This popularity shows no sign of diminishing. Numerous images of the trees, many taken by tourists, can now be found on the Internet, and dozens of websites feature the ‘prison tree’ claims. Some of these websites are travel blogs, others are dime-a-dozen travel advisory sites, and others (including local and state government websites) use the trees to promote local tourism. Worst of all are the 'Amazing Top Ten' sites that infest the Internet with unoriginal information. Look up some of the website types named above and you will instantly notice the unfortunately common practice of cutting-and-pasting entire blocks of text from one website to another. And so the legend spreads…

Behind the Stories
The fame of the Boab Prison Trees is well established in national folklore and it is easy to see why. A string of occasional newspaper articles - especially from the 1930s onwards - pretty much repeat similar stories of Aboriginal prisoners being confined within the boabs. Various authors mentioned the Derby boab tree elsewhere. JK Ewers wrote about the boab tree that was used ‘for a gaol’ for a 1949 edition of Walkabout magazine. In his 1961 book The land that sleeps, Gerald Glaskin mentioned the ‘famous’ tree having been ‘hollowed out and used as the township’s jail’. Mary Wilcocks similarly wrote of the ‘famous prison bottle tree’ in a 1966 article for Walkabout.

This repetition has
been amplified a hundredfold on the Internet, but all these sources seem to
contain a lot of hearsay and no direct evidence.

It is telling that the earliest written references to the prison trees only appeared in the 1910s, especially as the use of trees as chaining-posts is well established and recorded elsewhere in Australia. Early police stations in the Bush usually had no built structures outside of a canvas shelter, and it was common to chain prisoners to strong trees or heavy logs. This practice is known from official records and numerous newspaper accounts of the 19th century.

It does seem possible that the Wyndham and Derby boab trees were used as chaining-posts, and news articles of the 1930s and ‘40s mention this happening (although a huge chain would be needed to surround the tree). It is also quite possible that chains were affixed to a bolt in the tree. There is, however, no contemporary mention made of the inside of the tree being used, although the reminiscences of the Reverend Andrew Lennox - who lived in the region 1897-1907 - mention that the Wyndham boab had 'a door... cut out of it, with a lock and key on it, the decayed pith cleaned out was used as a temporary locker by the police, ventilated by slightly porous ceiling'. This memoir was completed in 1958.

On the other hand, this 1894 article about the treatment of Aboriginal prisoners being marched to Derby makes no mention of the boab, and neither does this 1894 story about Aboriginal prisoners escaping from Wyndham lock-up. Even fairly descriptive articles about Derby and Wyndham in the 1900s make no mention of the prison trees (such as this one from 1905) and, more tellingly, neither does this very long 1907 article.

The boab is particularly conspicuous by its absence from a 1905 state government report on the appalling treatment of Aboriginal prisoners in the area, despite the report giving a very detailed and damning account of the gaols and the transportation of prisoners to Wyndham and other local towns. A stockman who appeared before this inquiry was questioned:

'Have you seen natives being brought under escort by the police?'
'Yes.'
'Have you noticed whether the chains are attached to the constable's saddle, or held in his hand?'
'No. The chains were fastened round the blacks' necks, and they marched along in front of the policeman's horse'.
'Are the women put in chains?'
'Yes. This is done as a safeguard because they are witnesses against the male prisoners.' (Western Mail, 25 February 1905)

A police constable also described transporting female witnesses:

'How do you detain. them, with neck-chains?'
'They are chained by the ankles.'
'Do you mean that their two legs are chained together?'
'No. I fasten the gin to a tree, with a handcuff and then fix the chain to one ankle with another handcuff - one handcuff, for each prisoner.'
'Is it only at night that they are chained like this?'
'It is necessary to detain them sometimes in the day when going through scrub or. rocky country, where they might get away; It is very rare that they have to be secured in the day time.'
(Western Mail, 25 February 1905)

While the non-mention of any boab in these reports doesn't prove that the trees were not used as lockups, it does show that if they had, then the newspapers of the day would certainly have reported such things.

There is much doubt about the Derby tree in particular. The subject is explored in Gerald Wickens’ book The Baobabs* with the conclusion that there is zero official evidence for any use as a lockup, and that the tree is close enough to Derby (16km) that the police would have continued on to the town anyway (a gaol had been established there in 1887). Moreover, overland marches with prisoners tended to be long enough to cover several days and nights and as prisoners were chained together (by the neck) there was little need for makeshift lockups elsewhere, so why have one so close to Derby?

Aboriginal Perspectives
It is important to note that there are no Indigenous accounts of such a use. Researchers in Wyndham found that:

'... the indigenous interviewees revealed alternate perspectives regarding the accepted historical wisdom of prison trees in the Kimberley. The tale commonly told is that Aboriginal prisoners were imprisoned within the hollow in the tree overnight on multi-day trips to take them to the nearest Kimberley gaol. Aboriginal perspectives of the prison trees revealed the belief that prisoners were actually chained to the outside of the tree while their police custodians slept in the dry hollow (away from monsoonal rains and mosquitos).'

Boabs feature extensively in Aboriginal social, material and spiritual culture. As a Department of Environment and Heritage report on the Kimberleys noted:

'Some trees are believed to harbour extremely severe and potent powers, like Jilapur, a boab on the outskirts of Derby, more commonly known as the Derby Prison Tree. This tree is believed to be about 1,500 years old, and it has an opening into its hollow trunk large enough for a man to enter. There is speculation that prisoners were locked inside, and other accounts recall prisoners being chained around the outside of the tree. This tree is also a camping place for the Nyikina Creation Being Woonynoomboo.'

It was a practice in many Aboriginal cultures to place the bodies of their deceased on tree platforms and later put the bones inside trees or other concealed places. Confining living Aboriginal people inside trees that had been used in this way would have been unspeakably horrific from an Indigenous viewpoint. An account written in the 1910s noted the presence of human bones in the Derby tree:

'It has even been suggested that the Derby tree was used by Aborigines as a resting place for the dead. The natives have long been in the habit of making use of this lusus naturae as a habitation; it is indeed a dry and comfortable hut. Some bleached human bones were lying upon the floor, which suggested that the tribe had also made use of the tree for disposing of the dead. A frontal bone of a skull clearly bore evidence that the individual had fallen a victim to the bullet of a rifle.'#

Who 'they' were and why they took the skeletons is not elaborated on. Mayall's Well is very close to the prison boab. Also writing in 1934, author Ion Idriess claimed that the tree hollow was 'littered with aboriginal bones' and that a ‘fragmentary skeleton’ was still there but word was that ‘sightseers from the irregular steamers had souvenired others’.

In 1999 the 'Boab Prison Tree also known as Kunamudj' was registered under the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972. It is recognized as a ceremonial and mythological site associated with Kunamudj, the shark. The tree was also fenced off and a sign placed there reads thus:

'Site of Significance
The significance of the Prison Boab Tree derives from its reputed use as a rest point for police and escorted Aboriginal prisoners en-route to Derby, and principally, its prior but less publicly known connection with Aboriginal traditional religious beliefs.
The Prison Boab Tree attracts many visitors. The fence was erected out of respect for the religious significance of the Prison Boab Tree and to prevent pedestrian traffic from compacting the soil around its roots.
The site is protected under the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972. Please be advised that unauthorized entry beyond the perimeter fence is prohibited.
Note that snakes are known to inhabit the tree.'

The Verdict?
Widespread repetition of sensational stories without recourse to historical research is a key factor in urban myth-making. Newspapers and websites have certainly spread it far and wide over the last century, but these situations are always made worse when businesses have a vested interest in propagating myths. The tourist industry has to exploit whatever local resources/attractions it can to promote itself, and in this case the local industry around Derby and Wyndham certainly feature the prison trees prominently in their marketing.

From the dozens of ‘prison tree’ references on the Internet it would be very easy for a non-skeptical person to assume they must be true. Despite this, there seems to be little evidential basis for the lockup stories. There is none for the Derby tree, and only the writings of Rev. Andrew Lennox provide any eyewitness reference to the Wyndham tree as a lockup. It is quite likely that the trees could have been used for chaining people to, but not actually being confined inside. The stories have all the appearance of an urban (or in this case, rural) myth. What is more, this would be a myth that overshadows a much more interesting Indigenous perspective on the trees. Still, as the heritage-listings point out, their reputation as 'prison trees' does act as a useful reminder of the historical treatment of Aboriginal prisoners.

All that being said, if any reader out there knows of any direct evidence that these boabs actually were used as prison trees, I’d love to hear it.

* Full title: ‘The Baobabs: Pachycauls of Africa, Madagascar and Australia: The Pachycauls of Africa, Madagascar and Australia.’

# Herbert Basedow, ‘Narrative of an expedition of exploration in North-Western Australia’, Transactions of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, South Australia Branch, vol. XVIII, session 1916–1917, pp. 105–295.

04 July 2014

Unlike the glossy, spin-manipulated brochures that pass for government department reports today, annual prison reports used to provide frank warts-and-all assessments of the system. Even better, they were full of massively detailed statistics on thousands of inmates including - among other categories - their ages, occupations, educational background, nationality and religion. Need to know the number of Presbyterians held in Roma Gaol during 1888? It's all in the reports (the answer is 8, by the way).

These reports are a mine of data on the population of late-19th-century Queensland (or at least on those people who broke the law), and the nationality tables demonstrate the true multi-racial nature of the colony.

The nationality classification system for the reports would change periodically, so what I have reproduced here are the figures for 1888-97 when prison reports consistently used the following categories:

The more detailed tables in the annual reports show regional variances. The prisons near the northern goldfields, for example, were more likely to hold Chinese inmates. The heavy Japanese involvement in the pearl diving industry is also reflected in the northern prison numbers. Unfortunately other Asian residents such as Malays and Filipinos were lumped together in the 'Other Asian' category, but would have still figured prominently in the north.

Indians were also a significant minority although many were indentured agricultural labourers and were not permitted to stay in the colony once their work was done. The Queensland Aliens Act 1861 excluded most Asians and Indians from naturalisation and freehold titles, and these groups suffered under restrictive and inequitable workplace laws that resulted in many prison sentences.

This period was also the height of the South Sea Islander presence in the central coast sugar plantations and they were the biggest non-white demographic in the prisons during this time, even outnumbering Aboriginal peoples. Most of their crimes were petty, but the imprisonment rate was fuelled by racial paranoia in the sugar areas.

The Germans were a significant immigrant group that were allowed to settle and left their mark in Queensland placenames, but despite their relatively free legal status they still made up a large percentage of the prison population.

It was a surprise to find the Danes singled out from the 'Other Countries' category and featuring prominently. The poor Danish economy and Queensland government incentives contributed to this, and by the 1890s about half of the Danes living in Australia had entered via Queensland. 18% of all non-British people naturalised in Queensland before 1903 were from Denmark.

There are a few curios of the age in the nationality categories, such as 'British America' which referred to the Caribbean states and Canada. It is also clear that a sizeable population of Africans were in the colony at the time.

The groups at the top of the table provide no surprises. Aborigines had felt the sting of British law since 1788, and the huge numbers of British and Irish immigrants in the 19th century is also well reflected in the prisoner numbers, as was the ever-increasing demographic of native-born Australians.

Queensland prisons of the 1880s-'90s were a potpourri of nationalities, a result of proactive mid-century immigration policies and the demands and attractions of specific industries such as sugar and gold. Ethnically-targetted laws resulted in some groups being overrepresented in the prison population where, as will be discussed in a later article here, racial tensions were high and created problems for the prison authorities.